How would you deflect an asteroid if it were hurtling towards Earth? A competition run by the Space Generation Advisory Council asks students and young professionals to submit their ideas. Competition winner Alison Gibbings shares her idea for a 'smart cloud' that would slow down an asteroid.Read more

Experts at Southampton University have drawn up a league table of countries most likely to suffer severe loss of life or catastrophic damage should a large asteroid hit Earth.The list is largely made up of developed nations including China, Japan, the United States and Italy, on the basis that the size of their populations would mean millions of deaths.

The countries most at risk:ChinaIndonesiaIndiaJapanThe U.SThe PhilippinesItalyBritainBrazilNigeria

Countries around the world must team up to help prevent an asteroid, or giant speeding rock, from slamming into Earth, scientists and former astronauts said recently,NASA has tracked nearly 7,000 near-Earth objects that are bigger than several feet across. Of those, 1,157 are considered "potentially hazardous asteroids."Read more

New research by a Tucson scientist reveals shocking details about asteroids and our planet. The study shows certain asteroids could be more destructive than we ever thought.Elisabetta Pierazzo, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, studied asteroids ranging from 500 metres to one kilometre. Unlike the one that killed the dinosaurs, these asteroids would not cause mass extinction.Read more

Asteroid strike could force humans into vampire-like existenceAn asteroid splashdown in one of Earth's oceans could trigger a destructive chemical cycle that would wipe out half the ozone layer, according to a new study. The massive loss of protection against the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation would likely force humans into a vampire-style existence of staying indoors during daylight hours.Read more

Somewhere out in space there's a big rock that has our address on it.Throughout geological history, our planet has been hit by a succession of major asteroids and the probabilities suggest further impacts will occur in the future.No-one can say today when these might happen; we haven't yet identified an asteroid of sufficient size and on a path that gives us immediate cause for concern.Read more

It wasn't as though Alma College Chemistry Professor Melissa Strait and her student, Miriam Lipman, chose to travel all the way to California and shoot up some meteorites because they had nothing better to do.At NASA's Ames Research facility in Sunnyvale, the two are part of a research project that could one day, benefit us all.Read more